


Datacrunchers, Lab Rats, and Mutineers

by 30MinuteLoop



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Pre-Episode: S1E3 Context Is For Kings, Prison, background Lorca/Landry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-07 22:06:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12850470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/30MinuteLoop/pseuds/30MinuteLoop
Summary: What did Lorca do to get Burnham onto Discovery? This story answers the question - for the most part. Set the day prior to and the day of the beginning of "Context Is For Kings," S1E3.





	Datacrunchers, Lab Rats, and Mutineers

Lorca is restless. He’s not thinking it consciously, but he craves chaos, new situations requiring every clever thought and action he can muster.

Since he brought Landry on board (a top-notch choice, for many reasons...), security is better than ever. Commander Saru leads the crew through daily battle drills. So in a sense, they’re ready for anything. Any admiral would be content with what he’s doing here. _No one else could have turned these datacrunchers and lab rats into soldiers._

But settling into a routine, adjusting to a new normal, as he can tell the crew is trying to do over the past several weeks, is dangerous. It breeds complacency. Lorca is always on high alert, and he needs everyone there with him.

Hence the latest plan.

His door chimes. He shakes his thoughts out of his head, sets the lights to go up slowly, and unlocks the door.

Landry enters, examining the captain’s eyes intently as she approaches his desk. Is he restless, interested, or tired? She didn’t gain Lorca’s trust by being unobservant. Satisfied that she’s interrupting at an okay time, she says, “Captain, we’ve received a communication from Chapman. There’s another shuttle planned to depart tomorrow.”

Lorca raises an eyebrow ever so slightly. “Can we make sure our cargo is on it?”

“Slo - sorry, Chapman,” Landry stumbles over the codenames for their contacts, grimacing. “Chapman promises the cargo will be on it.”

Lorca nods. “ETA?”

“0930.”

“Keep me apprised,” he says, turning back to the window and hitting the button to dim the lights again.

“Yes, sir,” she says. She’s about to exit through the opening door when she turns back. The door slides shut again. “Captain? Tonight, my quarters?”

“2100,” he responds crisply, not even looking back at her. “My quarters. You’ll bring the whiskey.”

***

Burnham wakes up at 0600, like every day, when the overhead lights come on and the computer informs her and her cellmate that the chow hall opens in 30 minutes.

This cell is a bit nicer than the last, with a shower in the bathroom, and a bathroom door that closes, and a long shelf for her personal effects, such as they are. But her new cellmate takes VERY long showers, so Burnham can’t shower every morning like she’d prefer. However, Sren has no idea who Burnham is yet. At least that’s one fewer person Burnham has to be careful to avoid.

Instead, as Sren rushes for the shower, Burnham lies flat on her back in her bunk, hands folded on her stomach, and begins meditating. Within a few minutes, the noises of the prison come to life around her - the thumping of the next door neighbors, and the people on the next floor above.

Her thoughts shift almost immediately. How to stay out of trouble another day, how to sink into the floor so deeply that no one will notice.

She takes a deep breath, trying to drive out the anxiety. _Each day is a new one_ , she repeats her mantra. _I can serve my sentence and pay for my crimes today._ But every day, the memory of Georgiou, her crew aboard the Shenzhou, and the imagined faces of all 8,186 victims grips her heart so tightly it’s sometimes hard to breathe.

Again she tries to clear her mind. It’s been harder and harder to do so, despite her training. Starfleet prison is noisy, chaotic, and depressing. And she’s been in prison only six months.

She goes over her schedule for the day. She’ll go to the gym after breakfast. _Work out until my muscles stop working._ She’ll tutor other prisoners in Vulcan language in the late morning, trying to focus on the culture and the language without thinking about her family. _Work out again until my brain turns off._ She works in the prison kitchen on the dinner shift, cutting the vegetables in neat and regular pieces. _Do not talk to, or make eye contact with, Aristokles in the kitchen._ Her cheekbone still aches from the latest blow.

It’s Friday, she realizes. She’s supposed to see the prison psychologist, Dr. Sloan, this afternoon. He's not great at his job (not that she has much experience) - he's always trying to get her to work through her guilt. _I can’t work through it when I can’t fix it. But I know guilt is not useful. But I can’t work through it._ She’s told him that so many times. And then usually just stops talking.

***

Burnham eats a replicated breakfast, sitting alone in the corner of the chow hall. As she's putting her plate back in the replicator, the guard Drexel approaches. He's a short but extremely muscular human guard, with light brown skin and a London accent. Drexel is usually courteous, but terse.

“Burnham, you’re being transferred. Pack up - you’re out of here in half an hour.”

Burnham stares back at him, unable to mask the shock on her face with the utterly neutral expression she prefers to wear in here. “Where am I going?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Drexel says, shrugging. “Just giving the orders. I’ll be back to collect you in 30 minutes.”

She nods and thoughts begin racing through her head. Who to say goodbye to? Mostly just her Vulcan language students - the only people she really talks to. Sren goes for a long run after breakfast, and Burnham doesn’t really have anything to say to her anyway. Packing will take all of 10 minutes, stuffing things into one of those prison issue duffel bags.

She’d been led to believe she would be at this prison for a very long time. Possibly the rest of her life. Even though it was unsatisfying, it was approaching a routine. Routine held the promise that somehow, someday, she’d be able to stop ruminating on why she was here and just go through the days mechanically.

However, a change also would make it much harder to dwell on her mistakes for a little while. That thought puts a little spring in her step, for a few minutes.

***

Lorca is wide awake at 0515. Landry is still asleep in his bed. His head is swimming a bit with the whiskey, but he's had worse. That's life on the frontlines. Work hard, relax hard. If it could be called relaxing.

He gets up as quietly as he can and goes to his desk, still just in his boxers, to read his messages.

His mole in engineering reports Stamets' latest rants about Lorca, dated 2300 last night. Every crew complains about their captain from time to time, that's a given. But Stamets doesn't seem to care who hears him, and his criticisms encourage insubordination. Lorca makes a mental note: _Get Landry to ask more crew about engineering morale._

Doctor Culber's crew health report: high rates of headaches, work-related stress, psychological problems.  _Encourage crew parties and exercise, and start mandating_ _video counseling for severe mental health issues_ , he replies. _Keep me up to date on any problem cases._

No updates yet on the cargo arriving today, but Landry was managing most of that project. A bunch of messages from Starfleet, but that can wait. He's itching to run a few battle drills in the holodeck, try to work off some nervous energy and get ready to put the next stage of his plan in motion.

He gets up and looks around for his uniform, finally finding it under a pillow at the foot of his bed, along with his shoes. He puts it on. As he's leaning down to put on his left shoe, he loses his balance and nearly falls over. Landry snorts from the bed.

He raises an unamused eyebrow at her. “Good morning, Commander. I trust you slept well?" She cracks a small smile. "Can you check on the status of our cargo?” he asks as he slips on the right shoe.

“Yes, Captain,” she replies, picking up a padd from the bedside table and tapping a few buttons. “They were due to leave the prison 2 hours ago.”

“I want hourly updates of their exact location,” he says. “We need this to look seamless. Keep me informed. I'm going to the holodeck."

***

Lieutenant Tepper could have put Shuttle SPT 21 on autopilot to Starbase 18, but she prefers to stay on top of her game as a pilot, even on this quiet day. Normally, she has 10 or more convicts on board, and a guard backing her up.

They had departed over an hour late, due to the unscheduled addition of prisoner Burnham and all the delays in processing her out. She can't tell if the other prisoners know who Burnham is. But Tepper knows, and her mind is buzzing nonstop with anger and tension at having the mutineer on board. _Why isn’t there a guard here?_ She's wearing her protective gear but it doesn't feel like enough.

A chipper male voice on her comm interrupts her thoughts. “SPT 12, this is Starbase 18.”

“SPT 12 here, go ahead,” Tepper responds.

“SPT 12, we have a course correction for you. Sending coordinates now,” says the voice on the comm.

Tepper surveys the course correction data on her screen and sucks in a breath. _What the hell is this?_

“Starbase 18, can you confirm? You’re asking me to practically double back and go through the Electric Arena to get to Starbase 18?”

There’s an uncomfortably long pause.

“Starbase 18, please confirm?” she repeats.

“SPT 12, we need to avoid an even worse disturbance up ahead - some very large solar flares from Octas X.”

Tepper squints at her screen. “Starbase 18, Octas X is pretty far from our normal route - I don’t understand how solar flares would be an issue.”

“SPT 12, you’ll be in the path of the solar flares in less than five minutes,” the chipper voice, now with an edge to it, responds. “Please follow this course correction now.”

Tepper’s tension is ratcheting up with every word. “Starbase 18, please note my _objection_ to this reroute. It places my transport in significant danger. I have been repeatedly and specifically told to _avoid_ the Electric Arena due to frequent electrical storms and unsafe conditions.”

“ _Lieutenant Tepper_ ,” the voice says pointedly, all friendliness gone. “This is an order. You can take it up with navigational command when you get here.”

Tepper slams her fist on the dash. “Understood,” she forces out, her jaw clenched. _Who do these people think they are?_ They will definitely be hearing from her, loud and clear, at Starbase 18.

***

Despite Lorca’s best wishes, the mission is not seamless. The shuttle’s running late. Chapman has just informed him that the pilot responded very skeptically to the reroute, which for some reason had reached the shuttle half an hour later than it ought to have. _She had better not raise hell over this_ , Lorca muses. _What could we even do if she did?_ But the shuttle reroutes.

When the Discovery receives the expected distress call from the shuttle, it’s no problem for Stamets to put his current research project on hold to move to rescue the shuttle. Well, it’s no problem for Lorca to give the order; Stamets’ frustration comes through loud and clear.

“Captain, _we agreed yesterday_ that we were going to survey the mycelial network in this particular location,” Stamets snaps. “I’m already an hour into today’s sampling protocol. Send a shuttle instead!”

“These are Federation prisoners, Lieutenant - we don’t have time to launch a shuttle.” He can hear Stamets launching another insubordinate protest. “You can restart the protocol when we return,” he says, cutting off communication. Turning to Detmer, he orders, “Take us to the location of that distress call. Warp 3.”

***

The shuttle is tractored aboard the Discovery, where they discover the loss of the pilot. Lorca’s in his office alone, not needing to hide his satisfaction upon learning that Species GS-54 intercepted the shuttle, and that the pilot’s safety tether malfunctioned.

He’d expected the shuttle would run into trouble - that was part of the plan. He just hadn’t counted on the Electric Arena so cleanly wiping away a source of major liability to the mission. Although, the way the tether broke ( _so clean_ ) makes him wonder if Chapman took secondary measures.

_No matter now. Let Chapman handle that._

Lorca listens to and watches Burnham come aboard the ship, using the surveillance cameras he’s installed in key locations.

He’s especially interested in Burnham’s blank, hopeless expression. Although the transfer is probably the most excitement she’s had in months, he can tell she feels the futility of her predicament.

And yet.

Everyone turns to look at Burnham as she moves through the ship, and it’s not just because of her yellow prison uniform, or because they might recognize her - Burnham carries herself with unmistakable dignity.

Plus, her methodical, swift dispatch of her fellow prisoners shows that she’s still got a lot she wants to fight for - or against.

He can use her pain, her pride, and her fighting spirit to shake things up around here. _Sure, Starfleet will be angry, but they’re always angry. Let them be angry._ At least that’s a reaction he can use. As Landry escorts Burnham to the bridge, he feels more certain than ever. _Burnham is just who I need right now._


End file.
